The railroad promoted its holiday train rides across several states using targeted search and display advertising campaigns. Separate digital ad campaigns ran in Oregon, California, Colorado, Wisconsin and Massachusetts targeting grandparents and parents of young children. Both the display and search campaigns performed well above industry averages, receiving thousands of clicks at low costs per click. The campaigns successfully promoted the railroad's event to local audiences in each geography.

1. CASE
STUDY
RAILROAD’S PROMOTIONS
RESONATE WITH AUDIENCES
VIA SEARCH & DISPLAY
CHALLENGE
A holiday train ride is a popular family event
for railroads nationwide. To promote it across
the country, a promotional campaign needed
to appeal to audiences in several states
— including Oregon, California, Colorado,
Wisconsin and Massachusetts — while being
independently successful in each geography.
STRATEGY
The local participating railroad, along
with five others promoting the same
event, needed separate campaigns
targeting grandparents and parents of
young children on a national scale.
Targeted display advertising (including
remessaging on Oregonian Media Group’s
Extended Reach network sites) and Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns ran
for nearly a month over the holidays. Digital display ads for all six railroads ran on
Extended Reach sites, and local partners’ ads ran on OregonLive as well. The geo-
targeted SEM campaigns included keywords specific to the event in each location.
RESULTS
Both strategies yielded impressive click-through rates (CTR) and costs per click
(CPC). The display campaigns boasted a combined average CTR of 0.44% (7,228
clicks) on more than 1.6 million total impressions, surpassing the industry average.
One campaign’s remessaging CTR topped 0.77%. The average CPC for the SEM
campaigns was $0.41, with the average CTR for one campaign hovering near 20%.
Learn more about Oregonian Media Group solutions.
Visit OregonianMediaGroup.com
$0.41AVERAGE SEM CPC